the SF based punk rawk band has released a new 12" vinyl split with the band Miami. Their
CD release on
SF's Broken Rekids label is also still available. They pulled off a low budget down and dirty national tour
during the summer of 1999.Stops included Salt Lake City Utah, Denton Texas, Chicago Illinois, and Ashville North Carolina.
They plan more touring in Y2K. Just call 415 648 2136 for info...

The James Gang rides again?

Cleveland's late 60's and early 70's guitar heroes have a new 16 song Greatest
Hits collection available on MCA/Universal and recently reunited for The
Drew Carey Show. Kent State alum Joe Walsh, later of Eagles fame has been doing
some solo touring lately, and this collection features many of those crowd
pleasing favorites including Walk Away, and Funk #49.

Online Music Rights Licensing Debuts

A new website has sprung up promising to
license music by up and coming artists without mainstream publishing deals.
WWW.LICENSEMUSIC.COM
went live April 16th 1999 and founder Gerd Leonhard hopes to help aspiring
musicians connect with licensing opportunities. The start up based in San
Francisco's South of Market area will broker high quality lesser known artists
to film and T.V producers seeking music but lacking the big money needed to
negotiate with larger publishing rights organizations.

Labels purportedly ready to do business include
Alligator Records, Steven Halpern, Company players on the eight member staff
include folks who've worked with Virgin, 2.13.61, the Estate of Elvis Presley,
and
Acclaim Entertainment, Inc

Magic Jumps To New Career

A failed talkshow host and successful movie
theater chain owner has started a management firm and label. Ervin Magic Johnson
who brought Michigan State to the NCAA Final Four twenty years ago has signed
R&B acts Boyz II Men and Mase to his new management firm.
The HIV positive multi-millionaire has also
started Magic Johnson Music, a record label to be distributed by MCA. MJM's
first artist --R&B singer Myron Avant

East Bay Ray (born Ray Pepperell) and the rest of the
Dead Kennedys lineup -- bassist
Klaus Fluoride (born Geoffrey
Lyall) and drummer D.H. Peligro (born Darren Henley) -- filed suit against
Jello Biafra (born Eric Boucher)on October 29th 1998.

The musicians are seeking damages, access to royalties owed and a legal recognition of the Sept. 30 decision by Ray, Fluoride and Peligro to no longer have Alternative Tentacles and Mordam Records distribute their music.
The three former Dead Kennedys members collectively are partners in Decay Music, the band's business and administrative entity.

The suit reads, in part, "After assuming ownership of
Alternative
Tentacles, Biafra proceeded to violate, and continues to violate, his contractual and fiduciary duties to his partners in
Decay Music by engaging in a pattern and practice of self- dealing, placing his own interests ahead of the interests of his partners, wrongfully depriving his partners of their income from the Dead Kennedys catalog, and using partnership assets to enrich himself."

"We ain't gonna work on Biafra's farm no more,"
said Ray in a prepared statement.

The suit specifically asks for a jury trial and seeks "declaratory and injunctive relief,'' as well as financial damages from Biafra and
Mordam Records on charges of "breach of fiduciary duty, conversion, breach of oral contract, unjust enrichment and unfair business practices."

The dispute stems
partly due to missed opportunities in licensing band material to commercial
projects. Biafra reportedly turned down money from Levi Strauss to use Holiday In Cambodia in a TV commercial that would've netted multiple thousands of dollars for each band member without consulting them. He has also
flat out refused offers to reunite and appear in Japan.

Klaus Fluoride
said after a recent gig in Sacramento with his current band Jumbo Shrimp
"We really didn't want to have to go this route" but saw no other way
to settle. Jumbo
Shrimp also
periodically features East Bay Ray on guitar and peppers their surf-strumental
sound with covers of acts like Cheap
Trick, Weezer
and even disguised versions of the Dead Kennedys' classic "Too Drunk To
Fuck".

Biafra
continues a career of verbally expounding on various subject matter on the
college lecture circuit.

Video games and Pop music tie the knot (again)

well over 15 years
after Journey
was featured in their own arcade and Atari
console game, Metal stalwarts IRON MAIDEN
will be releasing a PC game called 'Ed Hunter' on May 17
through EMI Chrysalis developed by
Synthetic Dimensions of Wolverhampton UK. It will come with a dbl CD
retrospective of the band's career.

The nine member Wu
Tang Clan are
working with Activison
on a new Sony Playstation game that will feature 4 new audio tracks.
According to Activision's chairman Bobby Kotick the group approached the
company. He told USA Todaythat the clan were "very entrepreneurial
guys".

comic-antartic
space metal porn group GWAR
was also a peripheral part of a Beavis
and Butthead
video game where the two idiots attempted to fight their way into the show.

contributed
an original recording of the 'Scooby-Doo' theme song to
'Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island,' a full-length animated Warner Home
Video release out now based on the popular cartoon TV series...

If you'd like to send a Scooby web postcard visit the
Warner Bros. site by clicking the image above...

www.GoodNoise.com
changed their
name to E-music.com and offered stock as an IPO in 1999.
Cutting deals with content providers is their business model and they make
songs exclusively available for download
from their site. Among
the artists they work withis
ex-Pixies frontman Frank Black.His complete
album is available as an MP3 download for $8.99, or any
individual track for only 99 cents ...download times may vary.

Ringo of course has a
new album featuring Joe Walsh and other
cronies floating around somewhere south of the Hot 100. George Harrisonreportedly had a
cancerous polyp taken out and is recovering just fine.

Philanthropic
Misanthrope

In a
sadly semi-philanthropic gesture John Lennon's "still crazy
after all these years" assassin, Mark David
Chapman, told a reporter from the Rochester
Democrat and Chronicle that he refuses to benefit from the sale
of the copy of John Lennon & Yoko Ono's Double Fantasy album
that he had asked the former Beatle to autograph just moments
before he gunned him down. Apparently an anonymous man took it
from the crime scene after Chapman had stashed it behind the
watchman's booth, and has offered it for sale online for $1.8
million. Chapman told the reporter: "I have no interest
whatsoever in making a claim. I have never profited from this
crime, and I never will. I hope the money will be donated to
charity."

Meanwhile,
Grand Royal recording artist
Sean
Lennon reportedly mentioned in
Rolling Stone that his pop, at
times could be "a macho pig with a violent temper," and
also related a story of a time when John had sex with a woman at
a party while Yoko was in the next room. A tabloid says he's
recieved a few death threats because of it.

Paul
McCartney
has been working
on an album of Rock and Roll covers with David
Gilmour, which
may include Ricky
Nelson’s ‘Lonesome Town’
which he performed at a U.K charity concert in April. He also has been in the
studio with multi-instrumentalistYouth, from the
industrial punk band Killing Joke to release
another ambient techno project under the moniker
"Fireman". The album, McCartney's first since the death
of his wife, Linda McCartney, will be
released on the EMI imprint, Hydra, created solely for this
project. Capitol is also heavily hyping the 25th anniversary re-issue of
"Band On The Run".

PLEASE
HAMMER DON'T HEAL 'EM...

Although my secular self
has failed to witness MC Hammer
(a.k.a Stanley Burrell) preaching the word of the
gospel on the Black Entertainment Network, he's apparently an
ordained Baptist Minister now. The Former Bat Boy, Race Horse
Trader and Bankruptcy Court veteran is now MC
Hammer Ministries, a paid weekly show buying
airtime Sunday nights on BET. Rumor says he has plans to expand
his television ministry this fall by buying onto the Fox Family
Channel, which currently airs The 700 Club.

Wazzup
with Carlos Santana

Aside from making
Supernatural, one of the hottest albums of 1999/2000, Carlos is still hanging in
the hood. Fresh from winning more Grammy's than any one man could ever carry,
planning a huge tour, and riding the top of the charts with over 10 million
copies of Supernatural sold, Carlos was kicking it in the mission in late March.
The San Francisco Mission High alumni, who donated over $200,000 in the past
year through his Marin based Milagro Foundation to local and international
charities, still takes personal time to support local artists and
community based non-profits. Spotted eating lunch at Maya Taqueria
on 16th & Guerrero, the latino rock guitar legend was dining with local
artist and ex-Komotion collective member Sal Garcia. Garcia, who once helped
curate a Santana retrospective at the Mission Cultural Center, makes the unique
amulets that Carlos wears onstage and gives to people on his travels. Carlos
informed Garcia that he recently gave one to pop sensation Ricky Martin. The
Santana band leaves for stadium dates in Japan in April, hits Spain in May
and rolls through 8 countries by June. US dates begin in Florida in July, with
no Bay Area concerts expected until at least late August...

In early April
of 2000 he and Everlast filmed the video for Put
Your Lights On at
Oakland's Diamond Club.

He also now has a star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame, located
at 7080 Hollywood Blvd. (near the corner of Hollywood and La
Brea), the Walk Of Fame Star dedicated to the Mexican American
Guitar God was secured with contributions from the Hispanic
Education and Media Group, Inc. and dedicated on August 18th
1998 during a four night run at the Greek Theater in LA. Santana has also started his own label distributed by Sony.

IT
IS ANOTHER SAD DAY FOR GLAM ROCK:

Glam rock
legend GARY GLITTER (real
name PAUL GADD) was officially charged on Monday March
30th 1998 with 50 offenses relating to child
pornography. He was eventually convicted in November of
1999 and was being held in a British gaol. Glitter, 53 was charged by British
Police with possessing hundreds of indecent pseudo-photographs of children under
the age of 16. The charges came after nearly six hours of questioning at
Staple Hill police station on the outskirts of Bristol. Glitter
flew back to Britain from Cuba this spring, where he had been
hiding out since the New Year, with his 25-year-old girlfriend YUDENIA SOS
MARTINEZ.
Glitter was first questioned in November of
1997 after staff at a
computer chain store alerted police about material allegedly stored in
a computer Glitter had brought in for repair. The rocker consistently denied the allegations, but
was
forced to
litigate, was jailed
andwas released in late 1999.

Waddy
Wachtel, an
LA based american guitar slinger of dubious distinction is also
facing similar charges due to som electronic depictions
downloaded and stored on his hardrive that was sent in for
repair. Let this be a warning to all ye porno surferz, get
removable storage devices if your gonna be looking at XXX images.

Shane
MacGowan's manager has said he's working on a book of short
stories of reminiscent "of Charles Bukowski",

while his
recent 17 track album
"Crock of Gold" is as
yet unreleased in the State's...it is available for $26.99
via this linkMacGowan
recently was accused on Irish TV by Sinead O'Conner of being a junkie, and his
own parents came to his defense suggesting that O'connor mind her own business.
MacGowan failed to show up for his US appearances in 1999's Guinness Fleadh put
on by Mean Fiddler promotions.

NEW
ORDER PLAN A FULL COMEBACK:

Electronica
pioneers NEW ORDER are planning a full-scale comeback after
deciding they still like each other enought to get their
retro-80's fever comeback money. PETER HOOK and BERNARD SUMNER are returning to their former
glory as progenators of the electronica movement and reap the
economic rewards of their back catalog. After a six year break
from playing live together, the Manchester quartet have decided
to regroup to work on an album after their festival appearances
this past summer in England. Frontman Sumner says, "During
that break, there was the thought in our minds that we were never
gonna get back together or see each other again. That's different
from saying, 'Let's just take a holiday.'" But after New
Order manager ROB GRETTON contacted the group about a Festival gig,
they all agreed to meet up - and to their surprise got along
fine. Sumner adds, "We decided to have a meeting and if
anyone had any grudges to bear, to iron them out."

On Bob Dylan's recent Austrailian tour, he
played one club gig at Melbourne's Mercury Lounge, with fans
paying as high as $700 for tickets. According To Pollstar, one
fan had a particularly odd gift for Dylan -- 900 pages of court
transcript describing what she says was her sexual relationship
with him. The whole story is available online at the ConcertNet Australian News.

MORE
MUSIC NEWS BLURBS

Hutchence
"Suicide" Anniversary

As the anniversary of Michael Hutchence death passed, a private ceremony was organized by his father
on Nov. 22 1998 at an intimate chapel in North Ryde, Sydney.

The Hard Rock Cafe held a more public event that occurred on Jan. 22
1999, on
what would have been his thirty-ninth birthday. A "reunion" jam
on that occasion was organized by Kelland Hutchence ,who recently said of Michael "He brought the world a great deal of love and happiness -- I hope this tribute can do the same for his fans."

The INXS singer hanged himself with a belt at the Ritz-Carlton in Double Bay, Australia, on Nov. 22, 1997 -- just days before INXS were to have launched their twentieth anniversary "Lose Your Head" tour. Hutchence
was due to perform on Australian T.V w/ INXS the day of his death and was late for rehearsal when his body was discovered in a Sydney Hotel by the maid. Investigators found traces of cocaine, alcohol and prescription anti-depressants in Hutchence's blood and ruled his death a suicide.

Paula
Yates, widow of INXS
singer Michael
Hutchence, announced earlier in 1998 that she will attempt to
legally overturn an Australian coroner's ruling that declared her
husband's death a suicide, according to the Associated Press.
Yates, a british TV star and ex-wife of Sir Bob Geldof said that,
based on her personal knowledge of the singer, she could not
believe Hutchence took his own life.

Yates

and
Hutchence had a stormy relationship that spawned a surviving
daughter.

Lately
a slew of relatives and business managers have been contesting
the Hutchence will and value of his estate. His wealth had
apparently been hidden off shore in Asia for tax purposes and
entrusted to different business managers. Hutchence sister and
others have filed court documents in Australia about the
mysterious activities surrounding his money.

V2
records, started by Richard Branson has bid for the rights to release Hutchence
remaining solo recordings and re-release the Max Q project that formerly was
available via ATCO in the late eighties and early nineties.

1997's surprise hit album
"Hot" which has sold over a million copies. The new
1998 disc on the now Disney owned Mammoth label is titled
"Perennial Favorites" and has CD-Rom bonus tracks as
well. The disc's 38-minute audio length left plenty of data space
for its lively and innovative enhanced section. Conceived and
programmed by band associateClay Walker, it features 18
minutes of live performance video, including a brief documentary
on the recording of the album and the MTV-banned video for Hot's
"Put A Lid On It." An additional 22 minutes of audio
offers clips to all songs from The Inevitable, Hot, and Sold Out,
and as if that wasn't enough, a 363-page interactive book details
the history of the Zippers through interviews conducted over the
last two years.

The first decade of U2's extraordinary history is celebrated with the worldwide release by Island Records of "
U2 The Best of 1980-1990" was released on Tuesday, November 3

1998.
The initial pressing and advance orders included a bonus Cd with bonus B-sides from the eighties.
The main track listing of
U2 "The Best of 1980-1990" is:

-- Pride (In the Name of Love)

-- New Year's Day

-- With or Without You

-- I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For

-- Sunday Bloody Sunday

-- Bad

-- Where the Streets Have No Name

-- I Will Follow

-- The Unforgettable Fire

-- Desire

-- Angel of Harlem

-- When Love Comes to Town

-- Sweetest Thing

-- All I Want is You

CONCERT
PROMOTERS SINK TO NEW LOWS

The
success of the virtual stage show "Elvis -- The
Concert" has led promoters to consider organizing similar
concerts for other deceased stars. Stig Edgren, tour producer
of "Elvis," told
Amusement Business that promoters have contacted him about
resurrecting Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix; Edgren added
that he also would think about recreating virtual shows with the Grateful Dead, with living
band members playing with the later Jerry Garcia, or even Karen Carpenter, who could once
again sing with her brother.

Eddie
Micone, executive vice president of entertainment for Radio City
Productions, said his staff is discussing putting together a Dean Martin show using the
virtual concept. He envisions the show playing in Las Vegas and
Atlantic City because, he says, "Dino belongs in Vegas
forever."

The
10-date, two-week trial outing of "Elvis -- The
Concert" generated more than $1 million. The show consisted
of two hours' worth of film footage of the King crooning while
his original band members accompanied him live on stage.

I
guess that isn't much worse than a Long Beach Dub
All Stars Gig...at least you get to watch a video...

More
from the Grave: re-producing Tupac

New
in the can from Daz Dillinger of Tha Dogg
Pound are two new Tupac Shakur albums he's
producing, titled "One Nation" and "Makaveli &
Dillinger", which are both in the mixing stages right
now.Tha Dogg Pound's album is tentatively titled West Coast
Aftershock, and is expected to be released in the spring of 1999
on the troubled Death Row label.

BIG
STAR TRIBUTE PROJECT

a
Big
Star
tribute album, 'Big Star Small World', was released on May 17
1998 on Ignition Records.

The
album includes Teenage Fanclub's version of
'Jesus Christ', as well as Wilco ('Thirteen'), Matthew Sweet with Mike Mills and Jody Stephens ('The Ballad Of
El Goodo'), Juliana Hatfield ('Don't Lie To Me'), the now dropped
Ohio act Afghan Whigs ('Nighttime') and
The
Gin Blossoms ('Back Of A Car').

The Detroit
Board of Education passed a resolution calling on WDIV-TV,
Detroit, to move USA Networks Studios' "The
Jerry Springer Show," from the 4 p.m. time slot, when school
kids can be exposed to its "highly sexual, violent and
scandalous material." The show is the first or second most
watched show by teenagers in many markets.

Order
an import CD from CD Now...current available titles listed
here...

Have you ever noticed....

Anybody going slower than
you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac? -- George Carlin